Summary: In the 1960s many bright people, from scientists to science fiction writers, predicted that we would have a large presence in space by now. They correctly predicted we would have the technology. Why do we have nothing but a few small robot explorers? What will eventually draw us into space? This is a follow-up to Men in space: an expensive trip to nowhere.
Robert Heinlein predicts the future.
Robert Heinlein wrote “Where To” in 1952, giving predictions about the year 2000. He was bullish about space.
By 2000 AD we could have O’Neil colonies, self-supporting and exporting power to Earth, at both Lagrange-4 and Lagrange-5, transfer stations in orbit about Earth and around Luna, a permanent base on Luna equipped with an electric catapult — and a geriatrics retirement home.
… If you’re willing to settle today for a constant-boost on the close order of magnitude of 1/1000 G we can start the project later this afternoon, as there are several known ways of building constant-boost jobs with that tiny acceleration — even light-sail ships.
{Total time for a constant boost roundtrip to Mars and to Pluto at two low rates of acceleration:}
- 1/100 G………………50 days………………50 weeks
- 1/1000 G……………150 days……………150 weeks
I prefer to talk about light-sail ship (or rather ships that sail in the “Solar wind”) because the above table shows that we have the entire Solar System available to us right now; it is not necessary to wait for the year 2000 and new breakthroughs.
Ten weeks to Mars, a round trip to Pluto in 2 years and 9 months. Ten weeks — it took the Pilgrims in the Mayflower nine weeks and 3 days to cross the Atlantic. … England, Holland, Spain, and Portugal all created worldwide empires with ships that took as long to get anywhere and back as would a 1/1000 G spaceship. … Even the tiniest constant boost turns sailing the Solar System into a money-making commercial venture.
In 1980 he updated that article, writing “By the end of this century mankind will have explored this solar system and the first ship intended to reach the nearest star will be building.”
Acceleration of 1/1000 G is ~1 centimeter/second2; in 16 days that would carry you a million kilometers (Mars is 55 – 400 million km from Earth). It’s a slow way to travel the solar system, but withing our reach. A combination of solar sails and atomic-powered ion drives could do this using current technology (the Dawn space probe has a solar-powered ion drive).
In the 1860s a typical clipper could travel the 14,000 miles from China to London in 15 – 17 weeks at an average speed of 17 knots. A voyage from Australia to England carrying wool took 10 weeks. Modern cargo ships using fuel-efficient methods travel at similar speeds. In a generation we could travel around the inner solar system with similar travel times.
Jerry Pournelle explains who would do it, but not how they would.
Jerry Pournelle gives more detail about the potential of space in his Galaxy Science Fiction articles “Those Pesky Belters and Their Torchships” (May 1974) and “Life among the asteroids” (July 1974). In the latter he says:
A worldwide civilization was built around sailing ships and steamers making voyages of weeks to months. There’s no reason to believe it couldn’t happen in space.
… What kind of people would go out there? {T}hose going out there will be fleeing something. Bureaucracy, perhaps. Fleeing their spouses. Sent by a judge who wants them off Earth. Adventurers looking to make a fortune. Idealists who want to establish a “truly free society.” Fanatics for some cult or other who want to raise their children “properly.”
Five decades later none of this has happened, with no signs it will in the foreseeable future. Why? Pournelle’s belief seems right that Earth has thousands (probably millions) of middle class people with some capital. But we’re missing the other vital ingredient: financial support. Investors financed the American colonies seeking profits from minerals, crops, and furs. The Merchant Adventurers and Massachusetts Bay Company financed the largely Puritan colonies; the London Company established the Jamestown colony. The Hudson Bay Company led the exploration and development of northern Canada as a purely commercial venture.
The European explorations — followed by colonies and conquests — were done for profit (until the last stages, going to the poles for prestige and adventure). The clipper ships carried cargoes of great value. Nothing expensive gets built without an economic foundation.
Investors, public and private, wisely declined to act on space enthusiasts’ confident forecasts about the wealth and valuable knowledge to be found in space. The voyages by unmanned craft have shown that space has little to offer us at our current level of technology. We have the ability to colonize space, but insufficient reason to do so.
The most commonly cited reason in the 1970s, when so many people believed that by now mineral scarcities would have pushed prices to levels where investors could profitably tap the vast resources of the moon or asteroids. That has not happened, and seems unlikely for many generations — perhaps centuries.
A likely reason for space travel, eventually.
In Rendezvous with Rama (1973) Arthur C. Clarke described what might be the most likely reason for space travel.
At 0946 GMT on the morning of September 11 in the exceptionally beautiful summer of the year 2077, most of the inhabitants of Europe saw a dazzling fireball appear in the eastern sky. Within seconds it was brighter than the Sun, and as it moved across the heavens — at first in utter silence — it left behind it a churning column of dust and smoke.
Somewhere above Austria it began to disintegrate, producing a series of concussions so violent that more than a million people had their hearing permanently damaged. They were the lucky ones. Moving at fifty kilometers a second, a thousand tons of rock and metal impacted on the plains of northern Italy, destroying in a few flaming moments the labor of centuries. The cities of Padua and Verona were wiped from the face of the Earth; the last glories of Venice sank forever beneath the sea as the waters of the Adriatic came thundering landward after the hammer blow from space.
Six hundred thousand people died, and the total damage was more than a trillion dollars. But the loss to art, to history, to science — to the whole human race, for the rest of time — was beyond all computation. It was as if a great war had been fought and lost in a single morning; and few could draw much pleasure from the fact that, as the dust of destruction slowly settled, for months the whole world witnessed the most splendid dawns and sunsets since Krakatoa.
After the initial shock, mankind reacted with a determination and a unity that no earlier age could have shown. Such a disaster, it was realized, might not occur again for a thousand years — but it might occur tomorrow. And the next time, the consequences could be even worse. Very well; there would be no next time.
A hundred years earlier, a much poorer world, with far feebler resources, had squandered its wealth attempting to destroy weapons launched, suicidally, by mankind against itself. The effort had never been successful, but the skills acquired then had not been forgotten. Now they could be used for a far nobler purpose, and on an infinitely vaster stage. No meteorite large enough to cause catastrophe would ever again be allowed to breach the defenses of Earth.
So began Project SPACEGUARD.
Two films have described such an event: Deep Impact (1998) and Armageddon (1998). The real thing will happen eventually. Use the IMPACT Earth website to model Earth’s collision with the sized object of your choice — and see the resulting damage.
We’ll either decide to prevent it, or — should humanity survive — prevent another one.
For More Information
Other posts about investing in the future:
- Could a new “Manhattan Project” produce radically new energy sources?, 29 June 2010.
- Slashing R&D in favor of more important things, like wars and profits. Who cares about America’s future?
- The X-51A is $300 million of fun. Can we spend our money smarter and build a better future?
- Men in space: an expensive trip to nowhere.
